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Aim high. Accept failure.

You Don’t Have To Dress Up To Be Creepy

Happy Hallowe’en folks! Or if you don’t celebrate Hallowe’en, hello! I am not a big fan of Hallowe’en. In fact, if I had my choice we would spend it at home, growling through the letterbox at Trick-or-Treaters. But apparently it is a source of great excitement for the girls, so I have begrudgingly agreed to indulge them. For weeks they have been discussing and planning their costumes, and for an equal amount of time I have been gently nudging them in the direction of costumes that require little or no effort. And for once, I won!

Big Girl is planning to be a ghost. Her previous choices were a school witch or a zombie school girl. Easy you would think, but she just couldn’t possibly wear her actual school uniform as part of the outfit. No, no. It was suggested that I make her a new school uniform , from scratch, just for her to wear for half an hour this evening. Erm, no. It’s not that I can’t, but more that I can’t be bothered. Ghost is a piece of cake compared to that. Cut a hole in a bedsheet, paint her face white and Bob’s your uncle!

Little Girl is going to be a zombie, wearing a scary dress from her dress up bag. Again, easy peasy. Paint her face grey, crazy up her hair and we’re done! Squeak doesn’t get a choice until she can argue, so she is staying at home with me while I send Mark out with the children. (Heh heh heh.)

My kids totally rock dressing up. They can spend whole days changing identities and making up elaborate stories. Sometimes they try to pull me into the weird imaginary land they’ve created. If I’m lucky, they leave me be.

Big Girl has a style all of her own and she’s not afraid to show it.

This is Sportapirate. And yes, those are a pair of cheap reading glasses with the lenses popped out. She wore those things to school every day for ages, in fact managing to convince several people that she needed glasses. Nope, she’s just stylin’!

Little Girl is more a creature of habit. And by creature of habit, I mean she likes to do the same thing, over and over and over again. For at least 4 months, possibly closer to 6, she would get up in the morning, have her breakfast and then don her uniform. This was a Snow White dress, crippling pink plastic dressing up shoes (or ‘lippers, as she called them) and a nurse’s hat. But never call it a nurse’s hat, unless you want to feel her wrath. Obviously, it is a crown.

She would do everything in this get-up. Honestly, the money I have spent in Clarks buying her well-fitted, supportive shoes. What a waste of time!

But then, one fateful day, the worst happened. The ‘lippers broke. From that moment, she completely stopped wearing the outfit. I guess it just wasn’t the same. She dabbles now and experiments with different costumes, but the obsession is officially over.

This is not the outfit, but for some reason I can’t find a picture of the one she always wore.

And now, let me tell you a little story about Big Girl. Because if I don’t then the title makes absolutely no sense!

When Big Girl was about 2, she wasn’t much of a sleeper. I was pregnant with #2, and getting up every night at least twice became quite tiresome. Big Girl must have been aware of this, because she decided to step it up a notch.

She slept in a toddler bed, but for some reason when she woke up she would call for me repeatedly from the bed, rather than coming to the gate. Until…

Picture this. You’re in bed, in that dreamy state that is halfway between asleep and awake. Maybe tonight will be the night that she sleeps through. Perhaps the next thing I remember will be the sun shining through the window.

“Mummy! Muuuummy! Waaaaah!’ Ah, maybe not. So I drag my bloated carcass out of bed and hobble through to the next room. Where the bed is completely empty.

Shiiit! Where has BG gone? She couldn’t have got out, because there was a stairgate across her doorway and she didn’t really climb much. The room was tiny, without many hiding places. It was then, not for the first time, that I wondered if she had learned to teleport. I awkwardly clambered down to the floor and peered under the bed.

Nothing.

The wardrobe held only a pile of unfolded washing. A hiding place indeed, but not for a toddler. Suddenly, I heard a small cough. I spun around to find a small person crouching behind the rocking chair. Staring at me. BG’s eyes are enormous, and that night they were like big pools of terror. Argh! She looked like something out of one of those child-related horror films that I never watch because I’d be too scared to get out of bed at night. She was motionless, dimly lit by the light from the landing.